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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Boyd's argument for the reliability of abduction is not viciously circular

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Rule-circular arguments epistemically beg the question against skeptics because they presuppose the very inferential standard whose legitimacy is disputed.
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    • 2.A reasoner who doubts abduction's reliability cannot be rationally compelled by an argument whose validity depends on accepting abduction as reliable.
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    • 3.Van Cleve's criterion distinguishing benign from vicious circularity requires independent epistemic access to the rule's reliability, which Boyd's argument does not provide.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Laudan's pessimistic meta-induction shows that historically successful scientific theories with strong explanatory credentials have routinely proven false.
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    • 2.If abductive reasoning reliably tracked truth, the systematic falsification of previously best explanations would be statistically improbable rather than historically pervasive.
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    • 3.Boyd's argument therefore uses abduction to establish a reliability claim that abduction's own track record in science actively undermines.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Boyd's argument is rule-circular, not premise-circular
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    • 2.Rule-circular arguments are not necessarily viciously circular
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    • 3.A rule-circular argument for the reliability of rule R is not vicious provided that the use of R does not guarantee a positive conclusion about R's reliability
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